ffalo_ are centres of steel manufacture or
ore shipment, because they are situated on this great trade-route or
line of least resistance.

The coal-mines and iron-making plants of the southern Appalachians have
a considerable area. The chief manufacturing centres are _Birmingham_,
_Richmond_, _Roanoke_, and _Chattanooga_. A considerable part of the
Virginia ores find their way to the Ohio River steel-mills. Open-hearth
steel is an important manufacture in Birmingham. A large part of the
ores smelted in the southern Appalachian region are made into foundry
iron.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

What are the advantages and the disadvantages of manufacturing cotton
textiles in the New England States?

Why have the mining of ore and the manufacture of steel become generally
unprofitable in the New England States?

What causes have brought about the lowering of the prices of cotton
textiles during the past fifty years?--of shoes?

What makes the manufacture of artificial ice a precarious business north
of the latitude of Philadelphia?

What are the advantages and the disadvantages arising from the location
of a manufacturing industry at a seaport?

What is the design of a protective tariff? What are its advantages and
disadvantages?

Why are most of the great steel-making plants so remote from the mines
of iron ore used in making steel?

FOR COLLATERAL READING

Industrial Evolution of the United States--Chapters III-V.

Mineral Resources of the United States.

Outlines of Political Science--Chapters VIII-X.

CHAPTER XIX

THE UNITED STATES--THE BASIN OF THE GREAT LAKES AND THE MISSISSIPPI
VALLEY

The principal agricultural region of the United States extends from the
Appalachian ranges to the Rocky Mountains. A certain amount of
bread-stuffs, meat, and dairy products are grown in nearly every part of
the country for local use, but the grain, meat, and cotton of this
region are designed for export, and are therefore factors in the world's
commerce. The basin of the Great Lakes connects the Mississippi Valley
with the Atlantic seaboard.

=The Basin of the Great Lakes.=--This region includes not only the Great
Lakes and the area drained by the streams flowing into them, but also a
considerable region surrounding that commercially is tributary to the
traffic passing over the lakes. This basin itself is a part of a
trade-route destined very shortly to become one of the greatest highways
of traffic in